Reliable communication in overlay networks

Reliable point-to-point communication is usually achieved in overlay networks by applying TCP on the end nodes of a connection. This paper presents a hop-by-hop reliability approach that considerably reduces the latency and jitter of reliable connections. Our approach is feasible and beneficial in overlay networks that do not have the scalability and interoperability requirements of the global Internet. The effects of the hop-by-hop reliability approach are quantified in simulation as well as in practice using a newly developed overlay network system that is fair with the external traffic on the Internet. The experimental results show that the overhead associated with overlay network processing at the application level does not play an important factor compared with the considerable gain of the approach.